Outlook causes drive to crash.. Help desperately required please 1

[Kutter]

I have one WEIRD problem folks...

All I can say about it is that somehow Outlook is crashing a hard drive!

I know, I know! I am a PC engineer of 20+ years, there is NO WAY this can happen.. But let me assure you it IS happening. Heres the details.

Typically its the close to home computer thats doing this, my wifes business computer. She is pretty savy herself and backs all her work up to Dropbox (as she works) she also has the relevant PST files from outlook on the D: drive of her PC. The D: drive has one folder.. A dropbox folder that backs up.. as she works.

A while back now she started to notice a crash when she first tries to read her emails. The computer says 'Outlook not responding' and over time we have noticed that this is because the D: drive 'drops' from existence.

Faulty drive? Yep, my first guess, so wanting a quicker transfer rate for Photoshop and the like anyway, we bought her a brand new SSD drive. Copied all the dropbox info over and off she went again (incidentally with a new install of windows 7 Ultimate because it was about time we did that too.)

New formated C: drive, nstall of Windows 7 Ultimate, install of Adobe and Office (both cloud versions. Monthly sub)

Today, the same thing happened. D: drive dropped from existence, Outlook crashed in it's usual way.

Now.. Before everyone jumps to the conclusion that this is some kind of hardware issue...

My wife can use her PC for entire days without it going wrong, she has done in fact, as she often deals with important emails before she goes to work, and again when she comes home (she is a designer). As long as she doesnt open Outlook in the day the D: drive behaves perfectly, no issues whatsoever. Then 'randomly' (it doesnt happen every day) when she has Outlook open, the crash happens.

As you can imagine, I'm, pretty stumped here... Could really use some help.

Thanks in advance,

Kutter

 

[DrB0b]

Two questions:
What happens if you move the PST file to the local C drive and remap it in Outlook?

Have you tried to double check your PST via ScanPST? (Location of ScanPST.exe - C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\)

I'm not 100% sold on an Outlook/PST issue but is is never a bad idea to cover your bases since the PST is the only hangover from the previous HDD and install.

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

 

[rclarke250]

Now.. Before everyone jumps to the conclusion that this is some kind of hardware issue...

Then why put this in a hardware forum? Use forum 605 (e-mail issues)or for forum 68 (Microsoft Office).

Typically its the close to home computer thats doing this, my wifes business computer.

Are you saying this is happening on more than one computer?

And because they work a little differently have you tried using Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive and using the sync feature, instead of trying to maintain a persistent dropbox folder on a separate drive? Try it with a test email account in Outlook.

 

[Kutter]

Thanks for the replies guys...

DrBob, we are trying exactly that now.. Put the PST back where Outlook expects it to be on the C: drive. I will let you know here is we have any further issues.

rclarke250, Hardware forum because it doesn't 'feel' like a software problem. As I stated very clearly in the initial post, I changed 'hardware' to try and make this stop because thats what I thought it was automatically. Add to that that I haven't ruled out the fact that it may 'still' be hardware (Motherboard?)
I asked people not to jump to the conclusion simply to explain the ability to use the PC without Outlook and it not crash, people are good at not reading forum posts properly, I wanted to make sure everyone didn't instantly say, its hardware. Thats all.

And no, I'm not saying this is happening on more than one computer, I'm saying its 'typical' that the problem my 20 years of xperience cant fix is one of my own! Perhaps I worded it badly.

Kutter

 

[edfair]

Does the hard drive actually crash or the operating system loses contact with it? And does it come back on reboot?

Can you put the mail store on the D: without it being a dropbox synced directory. Sounds like you need to separate the issues that could be mail or could be dropbox.

Never have worked with outlook and not that much with 7 so if inappropriate comment please ignore it.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[cdogg]

How is the D: drive configured? Is it a separate physical partition on the main SSD drive, is it a mapped location, or is it a virtual partition? The problem with the D: drive dropping from Windows Explorer would certainly be the cause and should be the focus of any first attempts at a fix.

I'm betting that moving the PST back to the C: drive will resolve the issue, unless the PST file itself is the problem.



-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

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[Kutter]

Thanks everyone for your input GREATLY appreciated!

I read on another forum that the PST file of the monthly subbed Outlook is a 'live' file and though I dont really understand what that means in terms of backup I am guessing its likely that this is the trouble.

Just wanted others thoughts on it?

edfair: The system doesn't crash completely no.. Just the D: drive drops requiring a reboot to get it back.

cdogg: The SSD is just a single drive, nothing complex. One partition, no raid.

 

[rclarke250]

Live file means it is a persistent file, updating all the time. The .pst file could get new email when you do other tasks on the computer. While looking into this, I found this Link.

And for office 365 this Link

 

[MikeHalloran]

When I last used Outlook, quite a while back, I lost a couple years' worth of photos and correspondence to its infamous 2Gb filesize limit on.pst files.
... which was not actually a 2Gb limit, more like 1.5Gb beyond which recovery was impossible.

Two things come to mind:
1. Maybe newer versions of Outlook still have a hard limit, but it's bigger than 2Gb. How big is the problem file?
2. Outlook limitations aside, perhaps the file is so big that Windows doesn't have time to index the file between Dropbox transactions, so Windows gets confused.

 

[cdogg]

The SSD is just a single drive, nothing complex. One partition, no raid.

If the PC only has one drive with one partition, then what is the D: drive? I assume your operating system drive is C:

 

[rclarke250]

D: drive only has the .PST file on it and it is being saved to dropbox. C: drive has everything else, at least that was how I read it.

 

[edfair]

Since it is being backed up to dropbox as she works I suspect that the .pst file is in the dropbox folder. That was the reason for my suggestion to move it out of the dropbox folder as a test to see if dropbox syncing was part of the problem.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[cdogg]

rclarke,
If the SSD is the only drive in the system and only contains one partition, then what the heck is D:? Is it a mapped drive or virtual partition? That's what I'm wondering.

If dropbox is creating a virtual D: partition, then maybe that's why I'm confused. I never use dropbox.

 

[Kutter]

Sorry I don't understand the confusion.. When was it stated that the SSD was the only drive in the system??

If you read my initial post you will see that the wifes PC has a C:drive that has windows etc on it, and a D: drive that has all her design work AND the PST file for Outlook.. Total file size is 180 GB, PST file is about 600MB.

But as for confusion.. Theres no confusion! 2 drives.. 1 is C: other is newly installed SSD D: As explained in my first post.

 

[rclarke250]

I don't think it is an issue with where the .pst file resides so much as it is a live file and it is being uploaded to dropbox constantly, because any change in the dropbox folder will see the same thing happen on the cloud drive. This will cause all kinds of havoc with windows. The machine will constantly be trying to upload the changing .pst file to the cloud, this will cause the machine to saturate the network activity. Because it just won't be trying to update a small change, say 5 emails, but rewrite the whole 600mb .pst file everytime there is a minute change.

 

[DSummZZZ]

I would have to agree with rclarke250. Dropbox is going to synch the file with every change, which is going to happen every time an email is received, sent, deleted, ... And if Dropbox happens to have the file somewhat locked for updating when an email comes in, BAM!
Like the Windows registry, those .pst files are somewhat fragile. And I don't think you mentioned whether or not the D: drive is USB or built in, but USB drives can be somewhat iffy at times too.
I would suggest you either turn off automatic synching for that file/folder and manually synch it, or move it out of the Dropbox folder and set up a Windows Scheduler task to back it up during down time. Which, you could just back it up to the Dropbox folder and let it get synched from there.



-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.dave-summers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[cdogg]

And I don't think you mentioned whether or not the D: drive is USB or built in

Dave,
That's exactly why I was pushing this! It could be built in, USB, network, virtual, etc., and the answer to that can make a huge difference.

Kutter,
Your first post didn't state clearly that there were 2 drives in the system. Naming multiple drive letters does not mean the same thing as naming multiple drives! Also, when I asked "How the D: drive was configured", you replied that the "SSD is just a single drive". So needless to say, I was confused! Thanks for clearing it up (well somewhat anyway)...


I agree with Mike, edfair, and rclarke. Guess we're just waiting to see what the results are when Dropbox is disabled. If the problem persists, definitely try moving the PST to the C: drive (in case D: is flaking out) or due to the reasons Mike laid out, maybe try creating a new PST as a temporary test. They are known to misbehave as the size gets large, and even if size isn't a problem, they can become corrupted.

 

[goombawaho]

That's what I was thinking. I'd sync the outlook file to a DIFFERENT folder rather than syncing it from it's home folder. For example, use robocopy and have a scheduled task to copy the PST file to the folder and then allow that folder to be synced with DropBox.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[Kutter]

Hi again everyone,

Well it gets weirder...

We have stopped Dropbox updating the PST file altogether, It literally now updates ONLY files. Graphics, PS files, In Design files.. That sort of thing.

Yet STILL the drive (the new SSD remember) just drops when ever it feels like it. Has done it twice since we last spoke.

Any further ideas?

Thanks again.

Kutter.

 

[cdogg]

Kutter,
Two suggestions from earlier that you have yet to try or verify that you've tried:

1) Create a new temporary PST to rule out the PST itself as the issue.

2) Move the PST to the C: drive and disable Dropbox altogether. Just disable it for a few days and perform manual backups during that time.